Giving Compass' Take:

• The author offers insights on how nonprofit boards can assess calculated risks that will help strengthen their organizations and leverage their resources. 

• What barriers are there for nonprofit boards when thinking about risks? Why do many nonprofits hesitate to take them? How can risks strengthen a board and its organization?

• Read the BoardSource Magazine on Giving Compass for more information on best practices for governing boards in the social sector. 

It's a challenge to strategize about future plans or consider taking on new activities and programs with broader impact when resources are limited and the organization's staff and leadership already have their hands full. Which is why it is especially important for nonprofit boards to weigh and be willing to recommend taking calculated risks. Is yours?

What follows are some commonsense tips for nonprofit board members who are ready to help take their nonprofits to the next level.

  • Think data. A good strategic planning process should focus resources on the programs likely to have the greatest impact on the groups served by an organization, and data needs to be at the heart of that process.
  • Assess current risks. In Green Hasson Janks' most recent nonprofit report, Board Governance: The Path to Nonprofit Success, one of the firm's principals, Mark Kawauchi, notes that "a significant percentage of nonprofits are not incorporating and addressing risks in their strategic plans."
  • Collect best practices. Nonprofits of every size and stripe have published their success stories and shared lessons they learned along the way, so surfacing useful strategies for an organization to consider should be no more complicated than conducting an online search.
  • Align plans with resources. It may sound obvious, but given the limited resources available to most nonprofits, an important element of any planning process is understanding what an organization should stop doing in order to free up resources for a promising new program or activity.
  • Diversity, diversity, diversity. Embedding a tolerance for risk into an organization's culture is not easy for any organization, let alone a nonprofit.
  • Measure success. Another important, if often overlooked, part of strategic planning is defining what success looks like and how it will be measured.

Read the full article about risk on nonprofit boards by Donella Wilson at PhilanTopic